Over the past few seasons, Zuhair Murad has been integrating key inspirations from his couture collections into ready-to-wear. It’s not a literal lift—it might be a theme or a graphic element or even a color. As a result, his various categories are now as coherent as they’ve ever been.

Encouragingly, for a designer best known for cocktail-to-evening, Murad seems truly committed to daywear. His pragmatic side is emerging slowly but surely, in recognition of his clients’ real-life needs. Not that there aren’t a lot of ultra-feminine options. After all, Murad’s base relies on him for that.

For Pre-Fall, the inspirations were rather eclectic, running from the Edwardian era to the ’70s, the common theme being that those two periods were key to women’s liberation—for the suffragette movement in the first instance and for the women’s lib movement in the second.

Murad has a particular fondness for the Edwardian period because “that was the first age of the modern woman.” Also important, lace played a key role. So he ran the Belle Epoque through an Anita Pallenberg kaleidoscope with a little Virginia Woolf thrown in for good measure. His customers will find the result convincing, with naive prints, high-neck dresses in a mix of laces, and plenty of dévoré velvet, but also trouser suits and compelling prints inspired by Klimt. The latter influence was also spun out, winningly, on a jeweled clutch and other accessories. A black-and-white theme skewed, as the designer put it in his notes, “Dorian Gray meets Lucy Honeychurch,” however the white tweeds with black leather cabochon trim could just as easily speak for themselves. The fully sequined tuxedo jacket and the green velvet number with black satin lapels and real jeweled closures—in onyx, amazonite, marble, and gold—were rich but not OTT for this register. Some of the embroidered jacquards could even work with jeans.